The PT’s Dilma Rousseff defeated former Sao Paulo governor Jose Serra in Brazil’s second round of presidential voting Sunday becoming the country’s first-ever female leader – and arguably “the most powerful woman in the world.” According to the New York Times, with nearly all votes tallied, Ms. Rousseff, 62, took 56% of the vote compared to Mr. Serra’s 44%.
In its analysis of the victory, the paper says “in choosing Ms. Rousseff…voters sent a message that they preferred to give the governing Workers Party more time to broaden the successful economic policies of Mr. da Silva, whose government deepened economic stability and lifted millions of Brazilians out of poverty and into the lower middle classes.” Dilma herself, in a victory speech late Sunday echoed the need to deepen the outgoing government’s economic and social agenda. In particular, she said her administration would focus on eradicating poverty -- “an abyss that still keeps us from being a developed nation.” In the final debates of the campaign, Dilma also turned her full attention to the issue of education calling it “the most important issue facing Brazil.”
The Washington Post’s reporting highlights some of the achievements which made Lula da Silva one of the world’s most popular leaders. The former trade unionist, who remains in office until January 1, brought “more than 20 million Brazilians rose out of extreme poverty” during his two terms as president. Another 30 million joined the lower middle class and “the country's historic, yawning gap between rich and poor got a little smaller,” the Post says. [Although, as the paper suggested on Saturday, there remains debate between Lula and his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, over who began the policies that created such impressive results. The latter has long claimed he created the conditions for Brazil’s economic success by bringing economic stability, particularly currency stability, to the country.] Mercopress, meanwhile, looks at some future job possibilities for the outgoing president – speculation which will no doubt continue in the coming weeks. The Mercopress suggestion: Lula as the new secretary general of UNASUR.
Among the criticisms of Dilma Rousseff is her lack of political experience. In fact, Sunday’s victory was the petista’s first ever election victory, of any sort, and her only national political experience has been as Lula’s energy minister and chief of staff, running the day-to-day operations of the administration.
Over the coming months, the Wilson Center’s Paulo Sotero tells the Wall Street Journal, the relationship between the Dilma and Lula will be closely watched by many analysts.
“Lula could be very helpful to Dilma, or he could be very damaging. The question is, does he give her the political space to operate?”
Meanwhile, as the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Mark Weisbrot writes, the tone of the campaign – with its focus on issues like religion and abortion – may have concealed particularly important economic issues from being discussed more substantively. Weisbrot:
“Brazil's financial elite, which dominates the central bank, has an influence on economic policy that is at least as bad – and as powerful – as that of Wall Street in the United States. This is one reason why Brazil, even under Lula, has had, for many years, the highest or near-highest real interest rates in the world.”
In addition, says Weisbrot, capital investment and public investment have lagged under the PT, specifically when compared to the other BRIC countries.
To other stories:
· On last week’s bloody violence in Mexico, the Guardian has a good round-up over the weekend. The Guardian:
“Fifteen people killed in a car wash, 14 massacred at a teenager's birthday party, 13 shot dead at a drug rehabilitation centre, seven mowed down in the street, four factory workers killed on a bus and nine police officers killed in an ambush. Even by Mexican drug war standards, it has been a hellish week, crystallising the burgeoning sense that the violence has reached a new stage and fuelling dissatisfaction with the cost and efficacy of President Felipe Calderón's military-led offensive against the cartels. The massacres have shocked Mexicans so deeply less because of the number of victims than the fact that most of the men, women and children killed were obviously unconnected to any of the cartels fighting each other around the country.”
· The Washington Post, meanwhile, reports on the kidnapping of Mario Gonzalez, a lawyer and sister of Chihuahua’s former state attorney general, Patricia Gonzalez. “Gonzalez's kidnapping and his forced video ‘confession’… represent a stark escalation in a drug war that has left 30,000 dead over the past four years,” the paper writes – even going so far as to compare the video with similar ones made by al-Qaeda.
· In Juarez Friday, a college student participating in a peace protest was shot by two federal police officers.
· The New York Times publishes a letter from Virgilio Munoz Alberich, a member of Mexico’s National Security Cabinet, who presents the case in favor of President Calderon’s proposed military justice reform bill. “President Calderón’s government has an unwavering commitment to guaranteeing the rule of law and to safeguarding human rights for all,” Munoz Alberich claims. For its part, the Washington Post this morning says a recent boom in violence, particularly in the apparent “success-city” of Tijuana indicates that “Mexico needs more help than it is getting from the United States, which,” the paper claims, “does far more to help the traffickers - through demand for drugs and supply of guns - than it does the government.”
· And tomorrow California voters will finally decide on that state’s much-watched marijuana legalization initiative, Proposition 19. Time looks at why the initiative has received so much attention in Latin America. One of the newest and most outspoken allies of drug policy critics, former Mexican president Vicente Fox, offered his final words of support for Prop. 19 last week, pleading “May God let [Prop. 19] pass.” His logic: “The other U.S. states will have to follow step.” WOLA senior associate John Walsh writes that no matter the outcome Tuesday, Prop. 19 has “sparked a debate far beyond [California’s] borders” – one which is “set to grow rather than subside in the years to come.” Mitchell Koss, an executive producer for Current TV, writes in the LA Times that legalized pot in California would have little effect on Mexico’s drug wars. And the LA Times editorial board repeats its case against Prop. 19 – and notes that the latest poll numbers show the initiative failing by about 10 percentage points.
· The Economist reports on the recent acceleration of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, specifically highlighting a wave of expropriations announced by the Chavez government. On October 3rd, Chavez announced the expropriation of Agroisleña, a locally owned agricultural-supplies and credit firm. Last week Owens Illinois, an American-owned bottle manufacturer, became the 200th company to be taken into state hands in 2010, the magazine writes. Yesterday it was Venezuela’s largest steel producer, Sidetur, which was ordered into state hands [along with six housing projects which the president says will be handed over to the “middle class” upon their completion]. And Bloomberg reports that the expropriation of various Venezuelan golf courses could be next on the president’s agenda.
· From the National Security Archive, news that Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos and Abraham Lancerio Gómez, the two Guatemalan National Police officers accused of abducting and disappearing labor activist Edgar Fernando Garcia, were found guilty of forced disappearance and received the maximum sentence of 40 years in prison late last week. The indictments in the case were the first to come out of documents taken from the country’s Police Archives.
· Lisa Haugaard at the Huffington Post writes on last week’s high-level meetings between US and Colombian officials, highlighting the fact that extrajudicial killings of displaced Colombians and activists have continued since Juan Manuel Santos took office. [Interdisciplinary Group for Human Rights says 22 activists were killed in Santos’s first 75 days]. While Santos support of a new land bill and a victims’ reparations bill represent “positive developments,” 2010 has seen “steps backwards in achieving justice for killings of civilians by the army,” Haugaard argues. “The transfer of cases from military to civilian courts has slowed to a trickle, and in civilian courts, there were far fewer convictions.”
· In Honduras, Al-Jazeera reports on the massacre of at least 14 individuals after unknown gunmen opened fire on a group of people playing soccer near San Pedro Sula over the weekend.
· New opinion polls in Argentina show strong support for a re-election bid by current Argentina president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner following the death of her husband last week. Although elections are still one year away, a Nueva Comunicación poll shows that, if presidential elections were held now, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner would garner 31.8% of the vote, followed by Ricardo Alfonsín from the opposition Union Civica Radical with 15.9%.
· And finally, a new report on inequality published by the UN Development Program ranks Haiti, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Chile all among the fifteen most unequal countries in the world. Latin America’s most egalitarian country, according to the UNDP: Uruguay.
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